Speaker: Kaustubh Srikanth
On 17th December 2014, the Government of India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology issued an order to all licensed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country to block access to 32 websites, effective immediately. The basis of this was a claim that the targeted web services were being used for "Jihadi Propaganda" by "Anti-National groups". As a response to this, a few technologists in Berlin got together and thought it would be a good idea to do some research using free and accessible tools and to look at how censorship has been implemented, as well as the various techniques that could be used to circumvent this censorship. This talk will discuss our findings and make recommendations about how ISPs can handle such censorship requests better, while being fair and transparent to their customers.
On 17th December 2014, the Government of India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology issued an order to all licensed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country to block access to 32 websites, effective immediately. Not only did the ban affect access to popular cultural sites such as archive.org, vimeo.com, dailymotion.com, but the order also blocked access to sites like github.com, pastebin.com, which are useful for all sorts of people but are especially popular with software developers.
The Ministry's order was issued following a request from the Mumbai police's Anti-Terrorism Squad on 15th November 2014. The police request argued that the targeted web services were being used for "Jihadi Propaganda" by "Anti-National groups", and were encouraging youth in the country to join organisations like the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).
As a response to this, a few technologists in Berlin got together and thought it would be a good idea to do some research using free and accessible tools to look at how censorship has been implemented, as well as the various techniques that could be used to circumvent
